SR71 My Start on the Program

I was recently encouraged to relate some history of the 1912 program by Bert Fowler. I think this is a tale worth telling. The 1912 program was very successful and brought a lot of money into the AIL coffers. Very little is known of the program outside of those directly associated with it. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that the existence of an ELINT system on the SR71 was made known. What follows is a narrative is about my experience working on the 1912 program from sometime starting in late 1964 and lasting to 1992. So bear with me, this may be a long story. I apologize for any misspelling of names, but the events are to the best of my recollection. Other old timers of AIL may tell their own tale and it may differ from mine but this is what I remember.
George Skahill and I were working in the Antenna Group under Jim McDonough in Melville when we were requested to do some work for a group led by Greg Stephenson and Rod Lowman in the Data Systems Group in Deer Park.
We were to work on an ‘Antenna Coupler Bay’ that would be used to do ground checkout of an ELINT system. George and I had secret clearances but did not have a ‘need to know’ on what the system would be used on. We only had dimensions of the system and the frequencies that were to be covered, 60Mhz to 16Ghz. Our work was conducted in the basement of Deer Park manufacturing area, behind 2 cipher locked doors. During the first 6 months of working on the coupler bay, President Lyndon Johnson announced the existence of the SR71. (Actually it was initially the RS71 but the President mixed up the first two letters.) At the time a picture of the SR71 was printed in the New York Times and both George and I surmised that it was the vehicle. Sometime in 1965, after we had a somewhat working system and began to get some prototype ‘couplers’ built, George went back to the Antenna Group.
I finally was briefed into the program at a ‘Blue Feather One’ level. I remember that the job was through a Fairchild company situated on Larkfield Road just south of Jericho Turnpike. AIL was contracted to build the ELINT system along with the processing software and the checkout equipment and its associated software.
Once the coupler bay was built, it became necessary to assist in building the AGE (Automatic Ground Equipment) cart that would control the system checkout. During this time Mike Silver, a lead engineer on the AGE, and I went to Hewlett Packard in California to see how their production of RF couplers, and RF sweep generators were coming along. I think the 1912 program was an initial purchaser of the HP sweepers that covered a full octave bandwidth and they were very heavy. The sweepers were to be installed in drawers in the AGE Cart along with an early version of an IBM 360 computer that also was very heavy. Once the AGE cart was fully assembled it was not as mobile as we initially thought it would be.
The work on the AGE cart was done on in a walled cipher locked enclosure, near the indoor anechoic chamber in Deer Park. Coworkers were Stan Grzebyk, Danny Linino, Bernie Mueller, Roy Bruno (I may have the spelling wrong on those, sorry,) and an Air Force Sergeant, John Spek, who spent most of the year at AIL.
I graduated from Seattle University and was hired right out of college by AIL in June 1958. In March 1966, after talking it over with my wife Jan, we decided we wanted to live somewhere other than Long Island. We had a nice house in Northport Village but felt that LI was too confining for our ‘out west’ persona. I talked to Greg and Rod about my leaving AIL and they asked me if I would like to go into the field as part of the 1912 program office to work on the program. “Where?” “California” “what city?”, “can’t tell you but will be in Northern California”, “how long”, “one, possibly two years”. After talking it over with Jan, who was born in Fresno, Ca, we decided to sell the home in Northport and go to some unknown place in California. You can see how attached to LI we were!
I got a ‘Blue Feather Two’ clearance and was told the northern California location would be Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. But I could not tell anyone not cleared, where I was going. In late March 1966 it was decided that the AGE equipment would be ready for delivery sometime in July. Jan and I put our house up for sale and planned to leave LI in early July. I contacted the site manager for AIL at Beale AFB, Frank Kiel, and sent him some money to put an ad in the local paper for a rental that would be sufficient for my family of 5 girls and 1 boy somewhere near Beale AFB. To my surprise we got a response offering a 4-bedroom house on 10 acres about 12 miles from the base and we accepted: to begin occupancy mid July.
As with all projects, as I have come to learn, software is the last thing to get done. Around late May 1966 it became apparent that the AGE would be delayed several months because the control software needed additional work. Since I had already had a buyer for my house I could not remain on LI and was given the OK to go to Beale and report to Frank. The movers came on July 4th weekend and packed up the house and we were off for the adventure of our lifetime.